There is a fantastic program called WeSay for facilitating dictionary development. It’s particularly aimed at helping people gather and describe words in their own language even without strong computer experience or traditional linguistic training. It doesn’t replace analysis tools like FieldWorks, but presents a complementary approach and is interoperable. Where Fieldworks lets you document a …
Executive summary: ‘Literal’ is a darling word for many, attractive because it suggests straightforward, direct and reliable communication. However, the fact is that it gets used to mean quite a few different things by different people and if subjected to sufficiently intense scrutiny the assurances it offers are shown to be meaningless. While carrying emotive …
adj characterised by legs falling off. eg. “Daddy, I’m scelolytic. Pick me up.” From Greek σκελος part, leg + λυω to loose, unhitch. Variant Podilytic.
Here’s a great site about using WeSay to document languages and collect words for dictionaries from someone working in East Congo.
I’ve issued my first releases of keyboards for typing special Nigerian letters easily on a Mac. These facilitate producing the following special letters: əɛɨɔa̱e̱u̱i̱o̱ɓɗƙ₦, and hígh tóne, lòw tòne, fâllîng tône, and nãsãl fõrms.
Nigeria’s a great example of a place where Wycliffe’s Vision 2025 needs to be worked out. But what’s that vision? Here’s a video to explain in general: [youtube_sc clip_id=ZLWdWOoU0u4] Nigeria has the complete Bible in 19 or 20 languages. It has over 500 living languages. There are quite a few languages with New Testaments, but …
ReallyOnline, the Mac OS X dashboard widget for seeing and hearing when the internet comes and goes, has been updated to version 1.2. Main new feature: turn the voice on or off!
That’s another workshop finished and one issue that always crops up for translation teams is what to do with Key Biblical Terms – important words and concepts that have a lot of significance and come up throughout the Bible. Often there’s a term in the translators’ language that seems an instinctively good match, but which …
Some visiting techies from America helped set up a variety of translation teams mostly in fairly remote locations with satellite-powered internet to help connect them with consultants and other advisors. Here are some videos and interviews that one visiting technician made that might give you an insight into some aspects of translation that I’m involved …
Hooray! Together with a great team, we’ve managed to get the new St George’s-Tron Church site off the ground. Actually there’s still lots to do (behind the scenes and in front of the scenes), but the good news for me is that others can do a lot more now without needing to ask me.